Ed Rendell to Michigan: Don't Take Over Detroit

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says Michigan’s idea of a possible state takeover of financially-strapped Detroit would just do further harm to the Motor City.

“If the state came in and took over the entire operation of the government, it would be a bad message for Detroit,’’ Rendell told Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show.’’

“It would be difficult for it to get back to the point where it could borrow money at reasonable interest rates.

“It would be a message to businesses not to relocate to Detroit, it would send out all sorts of negative signals ... I hope Detroit makes the necessary cuts.’’

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Turning to the possibility of a sequester, Rendell, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said it would not mean “immediate Armageddon’’ on March 1.

“There’ll be some layoffs right away, federal employees and layoffs of people who work in the defense industries and those obviously won’t be harmful or hurt the economy,’’ he said.

“They’ll be cutting domestic programs as well as military, but it’ll take time for these cuts to phase in.’’

But, Rendell warned, in the course of a year “it will have a disastrous effect on the American economy.’’

Rendell admits President Barack Obama originally brought up the idea of a sequester.

“But don’t forget Speaker Boehner, Leader [Eric] Cantor, Congressman [Paul] Ryan, they all voted to support the sequester as well,’’ he said.

“Will this cause damage to Republicans and Democrats? It damages everyone. We need to find a reasonable way to avoid this, even if this means kicking the can down the road for a couple of months, which I hate.

“We should do the grand bargain with the president and John Boehner.’’